3 Reasons Why I Like InsiderPages more than Yelp

Traffic Comparison for Yelp, InsiderPages, and CitySearch

3 Reasons to Bid on Branded Keywords:

1.  A lot of other companies have had success with it: In Online Marketing Heros, Jeffrey Glueck from Travelocity stated “We found, and many other large e-commerce players have found, when they deconstructed the data, that 3/4 or more of their profit were coming from people typing in the company’s brand name into the search engine”.
2.  People might search branded keywords because they remember your product from another advertisement: In a TMP Directional Marketing report, it stated that approximately 70% of users will not remember a URL that they saw on television, but they might be likely to see an ad and remember the company name or product.
3.  Branded Keywords are searched frequently: According to a study conducted by Yahoo in 2007, 24% of searches that occur online are navigational in nature which means that users are looking for a specific site, or brand name.

Is it Useless to bid on Branded Keywords if I already appear in the Organic Results?

Although it’s important to make sure you show up in the sponsored section, a lot of people think it’s a waste of money if your site ranks well for branded keywords in the organic listings.  Young-Bean Song states in an article published by AdWeek in 2007 “The reality is those people are already intending to go to your Web site. What you’re really paying for is a glorified Yellow Pages listing.”

Although sponsored ads do not get clicked on as much as organic listings (as shown in the graphic below), Neilson NetRatings has found that users tend to spend 40% more time on the sponsored ads than they do on organic listings.

Where People Click on Google

Although Advertising Age didn’t have the same findings, their chart does indicate that visitors that click on Sponsored ads tend to have a lower bounce rate and therefore may be more interested in the content found on the website.

Advertising Age - Comparing Sponsored and Natural Search Results

Based on all the findings, The Best Results seems to come when Websites appear in the paid and organic section.  In March 2007, a study by Media Post Search Insider, indicated that a listing found both in the paid and organic listings on the same term resulted in an increase in clicks and post-click activity.  Enquiro Research did a similar study in 2007 and came up the results indicated in the graphic listed here.

Enquiro Research, 2007

Branded Keywords may not give you as many conversions as you’d think:

Although it is clear that bidding on branded keywords is probably a good idea, just how much attention should you put towards the brand-specific keywords?
In his book “Online Marketing Heros” Michael Miller states, “Don’t assume that every link you get from a search engine is attributable to the search engine itself; anyone typing in your brand name probably heard about you from a different medium, and the search engine shouldn’t receive full credit”.

According to an article that

Adam Goldberg

wrote in Search Engine Strategies (Volume 2, Issue 5), users are not actively searching a specific brand at the start of the buying cycle.  Instead, they first search for your product or service.  During these searches, they will establish which brands they prefer.  After that point, they will do searches for the specific brand they chose.  Adam Goldberg points out that too many advertisers today give a lot of credit to their “branded keywords” and assume that these keywords are the ones that are providing them the best ROI.  Adam’s suggestion is to break your keywords down into 3 categories: introducers, influencers, and closers.  Since branded keywords fall into the “closers” category, it’s important to make sure you have keywords that fit into the other 2 categories as well.

Offermatica also found that a campaign that has a mix of general search terms and branded search terms, tends to generate a 23% higher conversion volume and a 22% higher average revenue per visitor when compared to a campaign that does not include branded keywords.

Every day, I constantly hear my clients tell me that they are cutting back on their yellow pages advertising because ‘no one uses the yellow pages anymore’.  I’m sure you’ve heard it too – many people claim the only thing that the yellow page books are good for is firewood.  Although this is clearly not entirely true, it’s good to know about the current situation facing the yellow page companies.

What are they losing?

A report called “Say Goodbye to Yellow Pages” was done in July 2008 by Borrell Associates.  This report estimated that the Yellow Pages industry will lose 38.9% of its revenue over the next five years because smaller businesses are focusing more on online advertising.  It was expected that in 2008, the print annual revenue was $12.7 billion.  This is forecasted to decrease to $7.8 billion in 2013.

The Yellow Pages website doesn’t seem to indicate what their current standing is.  Here it says that they are “on target to generate 1.8 billion searches by the end of 2007″.  Since this information is clearly VERY outdated, it makes me wonder if the reason why they haven’t updated this is because the current number is lower.

But what about online yellow pages?

Although the amount of advertising done on online yellow pages sites is increasing, the industry is still losing revenue because the yellow page internet ads are only a third of the price of a print ad.  Half of the reason why they’re cheaper is because online advertising on yellow page websites are performance-driven and therefore the businesses only have to pay based on the activity of their ad (clicks and impressions).  For a lot of business owners, the question of whether they should migrate online or not has a simple answer – yes, because it’s cheaper and easier to track!

So should I stop advertising in yellow pages altogether?

I would say no.  60% of small businesses still advertise in the printed yellow pages, and some of them rely on this as their main source of leads.  Just because the usage of yellow pages has dropped a small % doesn’t mean advertising there is useless!

TMP Directional Marketing, an online advertising company, made a lot of great points in a paper that they published called Say Goodbye to Yellow Pages?  Or Maybe Not. 

1.       These days you need to advertise in more media sources. I agree with TMPDM when they stated that “The reach once enjoyed by advertisers can no longer be achieved through a few select media sources”.  Small businesses today need to really take advice from advertising professionals and “think outside the box”.  In order to stay ahead of your competition and not lose out on business, you can’t put “all your eggs in one basket” anymore.  Gone are the days where you can pay one company and all of a sudden reach 60% of your target audience in one shot.

2.       How companies should advertise should be different based on the industry.  TMPDM also pointed out that in the travel industry, there has been a steady decline in Yellow Pages advertising since 2003.  National revenue for this category have dropped an average of 7% annually over the same period of time.  Online, there has been a 48% average annual increase in travel agencies references since 2005.  This indicates that many companies in this industry are moving online.   TMPDM says that this isn’t the case in other industries, such as the tire dealers.

Advice for the yellow pages companies:

Chris Smith from Search Engine Land makes some great points in his article What Could Save the Yellow Pages? 10 Ideas. 

1.       Stop denying the trends –  He points out that one of the biggest mistakes of the yellow pages companies is that they are not dealing with this loss very well.  For the most part, they are refusing to admit they have a drop in usage and this “refusal  to acknowledge the bad news has resulted in distrust from advertisers, so small businesses are skeptical and are not listening to their premise sales reps as easily any more”.

2.       Lower the costs for print yellow pages – He says that the yellow pages companies should lower their costs in order to meet with advertisers’ expectations.  He says “You’re going to have to drop the costs  some in order to align with advertisers’ value perceptions – if usage is dropping […] then the value of advertising is dropping as well”. 

3.       Merge with your competitors – He suggests that some of the yellow page companies should join together so that they can be a stronger force.  He says, “If the market forces are doing what I’m thinking they are, companies will either need to merge, or else the weaker ones will just die off while the strongest organisms survive.  Sure there’s major expenses with planning a merger and bringing it to fruition, but your alternative might be to die off completely”.  This kind of goes a long with the idea that MSN had when they tried incessantly to buy Yahoo.

A lot of people have the idea that online advertising is expensive.  This can be true, but I’ve recently been looking for inexpensive ways to promote your site that are different than the standard “yellow pages” or “direct mail” that so many small businesses seem to be fixated on.  Here are 3 ideas that I’ve come up with so far: 

1.  Advertising on StumbleUpon

I explained what StumbleUpon is in a previous post.  Their toolbar suggests websites that they think the user would be interested in, which is based on their previous browsing history. 

With StumbleUpon advertising, they let you submit your site so that users can see it when they “Stumble” and give it a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’.  You can target the users by their age and location to make sure that you are only advertising to individuals in your immediate area.  This is good for industries like real estate or insurance where they would only have an interest in reaching individuals within a certain geographic proximity.

With your account, you are able to log in and see what types of ratings the users have given your site.  You pay as little as $0.05 per visit, so essentially for $5-$10 you can have 100 visitors view and rate your website.  This is a great form of advertising because it will only work if you have interesting content on your website.  It keeps business owners realizing that if they are going to have success online, they need to have something unique to offer.

2.  Advertising on BrownBook

BrownBook is an online directory like InsiderPages or Yelp.  They allow users to go on and rate local businesses.  The great thing about BrownBook is that it is free to submit a business listing, and for $10/year you can get priority placement in all the listings, a detailed marketing message, and instant alerts when your listing is reviewed by anyone else.  I have yet to find any other websites that can offer that for as little as $10/year.

I know some people will wonder, well, how much is a listing on BrownBook going to do for me – I’ve never even heard of them!  The answer is simple.  BrownBook has a great standing with the search engines, mainly with Google.  Every listing I have ever submitted to them shows up on the first page of Google under the business keywords/categories that I put on the listing.  If your name is Bob Thorton Real Estate in Orange, CA, your Brownbook listing will be very likely to show up when someone “Google’s” your business name, or does a search on Google for  ”real estate in Orange, CA”.  Obviously you have to make sure you tag and enter your business information correctly for this to happen.

3.  Advertising with Press Releases

A lot of people are aware that there are tons of “free press release distribution” websites out there.  However, sometimes it will be more beneficial to go with a company that will distribute your article to sources that people actually visit on a day-to-day basis.

Marketwire is a press release distribution company that will send your press release to every major news source (on and offline) for $140 and up.  On their site, they show you all the different sources that they distribute to, and you pay based on whether you want to do a national campaign, regional, state-wide, or just your metro area.  To distribute a 400-word press release in New York City, it costs $140.  If you’re doing a national distribution, it’s going to be closer to $600. 

The great thing is that they are able to tell you when a source has published your article so that you can track your efforts.  You do this by logging into your account online.  They will also distribute your release to online sources to help better your SEO campaign by inserting keywords into the article. 

How much do they cost?

According to http://www.markneting.com/internet_marketing.shtml, banner advertising is the most expensive online form of advertising.  This is partially because of the cost-per-impression payment model, and also because of the low click-through-ratio that banner advertisements receive. 

Although the cost will vary based on the site, I recently had a client that was quoted that it would cost him about $6-$10 for each click he would get from running a banner ad on several sites including automotive and financial sites. 

Do the People who “click” care about your product?

Many people will argue that these clicks are not as “qualified” as the ones they will get from search engines, since the consumer was not actively searching your product.  This is because banner advertising is a form of indirect advertising such as TV or Radio advertising versus the more effective direct advertising such as direct mail, telemarketing or search engine marketing.

How do I make my banner ad experience more successful?

According to “Web Marketing for Dummies”, with banner advertisements, bigger is always better.  The smaller the ad, the less clicks it will potentially receive.  Also the best positions for banner ads are:

1. The right side by the scroll bar
2. As close to the top of the page as possible (above the fold)
3. Rectangles integrated into the page layout

They said to avoid the standard banner ads that run across the very top of the page (486 x 60).  These are the most popular, but surprisingly the most ineffective. 

According to a Burst Media study, the more banner ads that display on a single page, the less success the advertisers will have.  They said that “ad clutter not only annoys the audience but it also diminishes ad effectiveness. An astonishing three-quarters (75.5%) of the respondents who remain on a site they perceive to be cluttered say they pay less attention to advertisements appearing on its pages”.

In my opinion, spending money on Search Engine Optimization is the best form of online advertising and has a much better ROI than banner advertising.  As shown in the illustration, it is second only to customer referrals.